The 1500 lives Vijay Mallya has chosen to ignore

"Why are you calling me? What is there to know about a Kingfisher Airline employee?" snaps Sujata Nair.

She is one of the nearly 1500 people still on the Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) payroll who are desperately clinging to the hope that the "king of good times" will eventually pay them their dues.

After relenting to talk about life after KFA, she talks of an incident, "My father underwent dialysis. It was only then that we learnt KFA had stopped paying our medical insurance premiums," she says. "I had to borrow from friends to pay the hospital bills."

KFA's website (flykingfisher.com) might still have Mallya from the bottom-right-hand corner promising that he is "taking things personally", but sadly for Nair and the airline's other employees this has been far from the case.